Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(111)

“Scusatemi. You wanted dinner,” she said stiffly.

“So I did,” Val said calmly. “I still do. Especially now.”

The good lady had taken Val’s suggestion of wine, bread and cheese as a challenge to inflict death by food. The assault started with a jug of homemade wine and two thick crockery cups to drink it out of. Then a crusty loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese with a filthy green rind that looked like it had been rolled in dead grass, and a creamy, yellow-white interior that smelled powerfully of sheep. A huge, phallic chunk of homemade salami followed.

“Cinghiale,” the signora said proudly. “Wild boar. My sons killed it.”

Then she went out onto the patio and bent over what they then realized was an enormous wheelbarrow. She began bringing in earthenware oven crocks, each wrapped in its own artfully knotted dish towel, each filled with a fragrant hot baked or stewed dish.

She covered the rickety table with them and went out again. Her next armful of jars held vegetables preserved in vinegar, oil and garlic; sun-dried tomatos, eggplants, peppers, olives. A basket of freshly picked oranges was the crowning touch, or so they thought until the signora reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a slender-necked corked bottle filled with a pale yellow liquor.

“Limoncello,” she announced proudly. “My own lemons. Very good.”

Val grabbed the lady’s hand, which fortunately no longer appeared to be covered with chicken blood, and kissed it fervently.

“Signora, you are an angel sent from heaven,” he declared. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The signora yanked her hand back with a smirk and took a long, appreciative look at Val’s naked chest and half-fastened pants. She grunted her approval. “You will need it,” she said. “Buon appetito.”

“God, yes,” he said in heartfelt tones.

The signora frowned at Tam and pinched her upper arm. “Eat some of my braciole,” she admonished. “You’re too skinny. That man will squash you.”

After the signora had gone, they perched on the rickety, termite-riddled chairs on each side of the loaded table, and dug into the feast.

Tam discovered, to her astonishment, that food just kept on going right into her and space kept opening up for more. It was so different from her usual feeling when eating or trying to—that the food was bumping up against a blank stone wall that would let nothing through.

Not tonight. Tonight, she was open, yawning wide, eager.

Usually, strong tastes repelled her. Tonight, they were strangely marvelous. She ate three times as much as she usually managed to choke down, and Val inhaled over ten times that much on his own.

When she finally stopped, stuffed, she sat back and just watched in awe as he continued to eat, and eat, and eat.

“You’re risking your life with that stuff, you know,” she informed him. He layered sun-dried tomatoes with the wild boar salami, cheese, and fleshy red festoons of peppers on a huge chunk of dripping, oil-soaked bread. “Salmonella, botulism, and ten other lethal bacteria that I could name.”

“Don’t name them.” His white teeth bit down, eyes closing in delight as he chewed. “And this from a woman who travels with at least twenty different types of deadly poison in her beauty case?”

Tam grabbed an orange and began to peel. At least its contents would be more or less sterile. “That’s different. Those compounds were cooked in a lab under controlled conditions by people who hold advanced degrees in chemistry from MIT and Stanford.”

He ripped off another chunk of bread and fearlessly prepared another heap. “But they do not taste as good,” he pointed out.

She took a bite of orange. The explosive, tangy sweetness made her gasp. “The chicken blood alone might carry you away,” she warned.

Val stabbed his fork into the crock that held thinly sliced dark meat wrapped around flavorful cheese, hot pepper, parsley and garlic, floating in a rich lake of spiced tomato sauce. He chewed fearlessly and stared her in the face, a suggestive gleam in his eyes.

“Don’t think for one second that you’re going to kiss me after you eat all that garlic,” she warned him.

“Don’t think for one second that you can deny me,” he retorted coolly. “I’m much bigger than you are. Faster, too.”

“Ah, but I’m more treacherous,” she teased him.

His face sobered. He looked at the food in his hand as if he’d forgotten what to do with it. “I would not want to put that to the test.”

She missed that fleeting moment of lightness. It was so rare in her life to laugh and joke, kick around a man and have him come back for more. To have fun. Typical Tam. Trust her to kill it by accident.

She tended to kill things, as a rule. She abruptly hated herself for it. “I won’t betray you if I can help it,” she said, a lame attempt to save the moment.

“Me neither,” he replied quietly. “I swear it.”

She lost her appetite for the uneaten orange, delicious though it was. She held it out. “Freshen your breath with this,” she commanded. “And then come back to bed.”

That worked, but sex always did with men. His face brightened.

He devoured the orange, stripped off his pants to reveal his already lengthening cock, and slid between the sheets, holding the covers up for her. Oddly, his doggish male predictability bothered her less than usual tonight. She eased between the covers, curling up against his heat.